Polish man who burned effigy of Jew to sue those calling him anti-Semite

Piotr Rybak set the blaze during an anti-immigrant demonstration in 2005, but denies he is anti-Jewish

By JTA 6 September 2017, 6:27 pm

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Piotr Rybak at a rally in his honor in Warsaw last year. (Krzysztof Bielawski/JTA)

WARSAW, Poland — A Polish man sentenced to prison for burning an effigy of a Haredi Jew said he will sue the leaders of the Wroclaw Jewish community for publicly naming him an anti-Semite.

Piotr Rybak burned an effigy of a Haredi Orthodox Jew during a demonstration in 2015 in Wroclaw against accepting refugees in Poland. The original Wroclaw court sentenced him to 10 months in prison. An appeals court reduced the sentence to three months in prison.

The leaders named in his lawsuit are Aleksander Gleichgewicht, chairman of the Jewish community in Wrocław, and Rafał Dutkiewicz, president of the Wroclaw Jewish community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e2QB3TbyYo

Rybak asked for the possibility of serving his penalty under house arrest with an electronic surveillance system. The original court rejected this request. On Tuesday, the appeals court ordered the lower court to reconsider this request.

After leaving the courtroom, Rybak said: “With my lawyers we are already considering how to sue Dutkiewicz and Gleichgewicht, who called me a fascist, anti-Semite and stinking nationalist.”